German Officials Report Increased Threat of Terrorist Attacks

By MARK LANDLER

Published: June 23, 2007

Germany faces a heightened threat of terrorist attacks because of its military involvement in Afghanistan, government security officials here said Friday. The danger level, they warned, was comparable to the months before the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Three German residents, believed to be radical Islamic militants, were arrested in Pakistan in recent days, according to the German Federal Criminal Police. Officials here suspect them of traveling to the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan to enter terrorist training camps.

''This tells us that German interests are in danger of being attacked, for example, by suicide bombers,'' a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Christian Sachs, said in a telephone interview.

He said the authorities did not have concrete evidence of a terrorist plot within Germany. But the police have tightened border security and are scrutinizing people traveling to and from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

German soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan face the most immediate threat, officials said, citing an attack last weekend on a convoy outside Kabul that included vehicles from the German Embassy. There were no injuries, but a vehicle was destroyed, a government spokesman said.

The authorities gave few details about the German residents arrested in Pakistan, saying only that two had been under surveillance while at home and were viewed as potentially dangerous. The authorities feared that the German residents may have planned to return to Germany to carry out attacks.

''We are following up all leads, and therefore I don't think there is any reason to panic,'' the deputy interior minister, August Hanning, told reporters in Berlin. ''But I do think that increased vigilance is needed.''

Mr. Hanning likened the atmosphere to that in the summer before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, ''when obscure threats surfaced, which, as we know, became reality.'' Several of the hijackers in the attacks hatched their plot while posing as students in Hamburg.

The latest warning -- which was amplified in public statements by the interior minister, Wolfgang Sch?le, and the head of the Federal Criminal Police, J?Ziercke -- is likely to fan domestic debate about Germany's military obligations, which now range from Africa to Central Asia.

In Afghanistan, Germany has 3,000 troops, part of a NATO force that has battled a persistent Taliban insurgency. Terrorism experts said jitters about an attack could put pressure on politicians not to extend the German military deployment, which comes up for renewal in Parliament in October.

''Any extension of involvement by German troops in Afghanistan could be a justification for the terrorists to do something,'' said Rolf Tophoven, an independent counterterrorism expert in Germany. Mr. Tophoven said he believed that the government's warning was serious, though he noted that the Interior Ministry had pushed for stronger antiterrorism laws, including surveillance of private computers.

Germany has not suffered any terrorist attacks like those in Britain and Spain, both of which supplied troops for the Iraq war. But its involvement in Afghanistan has stirred unease among politicians, aroused in part by allegations of misconduct by German soldiers there.

In March, one-third of the Parliament members from the Social Democratic Party, which is part of the governing coalition, voted against deploying six Tornado reconnaissance jets to fly missions over southern Afghanistan.

Last July, Germany narrowly avoided a potentially deadly attack when two homemade bombs, hidden in suitcases on trains, failed to explode. Two Lebanese men who were living in Germany were arrested, and officials later said the plot was fueled in part by anger over the publication of satirical cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.